Color codes

Looking earnestly at each head of approximately 80 attendees entering the lecture room, it took the elegant, silver-haired woman only seconds to make her decisions. “You're a violet. With peace.” “You're a blue. With curiosity.”

So began a meeting of the San Diego chapter of the Edgar Cayce Association for Research and Enlightenment, a nonprofit dedicated to the life work of the famous “sleeping prophet.” Among the many psychic gifts attributed to Cayce, one of the most notable was an ability to see the color of the human aura.

The woman greeting attendees was also said to have that ability. Nancy Ann Tappe, ordained minister, clairvoyant and author, attributed her special vision to “a neurological process diagnosed by medicine that is called synesthesia.”

Although a distinction was made between religion and spirituality-“Religion segregates. Spirituality integrates-this spiritual meeting shared elements with many a Sunday sermon. The program started with a moment of silence and a prayer. Tappe quoted from the Bible and made reference to “God” several times.

Tappe was there to discuss the life colors of every person's individual aura. “That color tells me what your syllabus is for this lifetime,” she said. And because of current world chaos, she'd also discuss “eternal patterns.”

And she wasn't kidding. The gospel-like call-and-response between Tappe and some audience members-“Do you understand?” “Uh-huh! Yes! Sounds like me!”-indicated a number of attendees had prior experience in this area. But her warning could only have provided cold comfort for novices, hearing for the first time such pronouncements as: “There are very few blue men. And those that are are women in men's bodies. Very few of them are fathers. But those that are are mothers. Do you understand?”

The life colors were grouped into four categories: physical (magenta, red, pink, orange and lavender); mental (tan, yellow and green); spiritual/creative (blue and violet); and, perhaps the least envy-inspiring in terms of category name, the floaters (crystal and indigo).

A man asked if the name floaters implied crystals were a flaky sort. “No, they have the whole picture,” Tappe replied. “They just don't know where they fit in it. Do you understand?”

According to Tappe, most people these days are either violets or blues. In addition, a new breed of children being born: indigos.

“We see them as strange and unmanageable,” Tappe said, while a mother in the audience nodded in agreement and pointed at her teenage, indigo daughter, sitting on the floor near the podium. “The truth is we have to catch up. Do you understand?” By her account, 95 percent of children younger than 10 are indigos.

Nobody in attendance had patterns of materialism or destruction. “Very few people do,” Tappe said. “Hitler had destruction. That doesn't mean we have to make him a devil. He simply taught us what war does to you. Do you understand? Did we learn?”

And what, asked a woman, about Saddam Hussein? Where does he fall into this color scheme? “He's probably equal to Bush,” Tappe replied. “They're the ones having the argument.”

Could a person's aura change from, say, blue to indigo?

“No,” Tappe replied firmly. “You can die and come back an indigo. But remember that the indigos aren't the new humanity. They're the bridge. Do you understand? They're the ones that are going to walk across the bridge without total destruction.”

Another of the vastly outnumbered males then commented that our government seemed to be “working on a defense fund to blow that bridge up.”

The loud hum of a coffee maker brewing post-lecture refreshment unnerved one woman. “I'm a blue, and I'd like to fix that noise,” she said.

Addressing the teenage girl, Tappe said, “You as an indigo feel sometimes displaced. Is that not true? You're the architect for the future. You have the plan. You don't have the construction permit. Do you understand?”

“Is that why I can't watch old movies and stuff like that?” the teen asked.

Tappe later got on the subject of the crystal life color. “The last eight to 10 years, the crystals have been through more challenges than even the violets. A lot of crystals had broken bones in that time period,” she said. “The crystals' mirror has been closing because they were always mirroring to other people who they were.”

Suddenly-“What is that look about?” Tappe asked, making an open-mouthed imitation of the perplexed expression of the woman who'd asked about crystals.

Later, Tappe admitted she often discusses aura colors and world leaders, but declined to answer such questions prior to her big, upcoming, annual lecture, featuring predictions and observations on colors for the coming year.